


Ghosts

by B_Rated



Category: Naruto
Genre: Dark fic, Grief/Mourning, M/M, angsty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-23
Updated: 2018-05-03
Packaged: 2019-01-04 11:41:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12168153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/B_Rated/pseuds/B_Rated
Summary: Orochimaru is another year older, underappreciated, and bitter without the people he used to know as friends. At least there's some one else in the village whose pain compliments his own.





	1. Chapter 1

Orochimaru’s pen stopped mid-notation in his research journal. He looked at the date at the top of the page again. October the twenty-seventh. His birthday, today was his birthday. 

He raised his head and scanned the dark lab. He was twenty-four, alone with corpses and chemicals.

Tsunade would have drug him to the bars, challenging him to keep up with her. She’d laugh and elbow him. He would sit there trying not to smile and only failing a little.

Jiraiya would bring him to one of those places where the women climb into your lap if you pay them.

_The Toad Sage’s big booming laugh, filled the room, while Orochimaru barely moved. He sat with his arms crossed, getting more and more irritated with every giggly girl thrown at him._

_While walking away, Jiraiya frowned, pouting. “Really? None of them? Man, what kind of girl do you like?”_

_Orochimaru let his lip twitch in a sarcastic smile. “The kind that are men.”_

He had told Tsunade, it was only by some miracle she was able to keep drunk secrets from spilling out.

Orochimaru set down his pen, breathing in a sigh and closing his eyes. He hated them. They had abandoned him. 

The village was weak and stinking. For all his efforts to make it stronger, his dedication to unlocking nature’s secrets, they called him a madman and a monster. 

He closed his notes and stood from the workbench, leaving behind the research. He wished he could make a poison to kill the memories, the ghosts of his former teammates in his head, but such a thing already existed.

He slid his hands into the sleeve of the loose gown he liked to wear. Tsunade always complemented his wardrobe, Jiraiya sometimes said he looked too feminine.

He hated himself for thinking about them again. 

Orochimaru ducked under the banner into the bar where shinobi came to unwind after their missions. A group of men were laughing loudly, sharing drunken stories. They fell quiet as he passed. Often people stared, their judgement plain on their faces.

He sat himself at an empty booth and ordered a bottle of sake. He poured his shots, the ghost of Tsunade across from him.

He stared at the empty seat. Her memory like an annoying scratch at the back of his mind. She left him. She was dead to him. He slid a shot back from the low cup, dismissing her.

The happy noise of the bar was back. The kind of people Jiraiya would sing shinobi hymns with.

He had another drink.

Drown them, remove them from his mind, push them far away, where they wanted to be. Far away from him.

Without ordering it, another bottle one was placed at his table. The sannin looked up confused. The waiter pointed. A man at the bar waved in a friendly way.

_”Thank you, friend!”_ Jiraiya’s voice echoed in his head.

_”Ask him over,”_ Tsunade urged.

He dropped his head, staring at the single shot glass. He had another drink.

The man at the bar walked towards his table without invitation. “Orochimaru-sama,” he bowed his head.

Orochimaru didn’t look at him, drinking while staring at the empty seat in front of him.

“It’s a small thanks,” he went on anyway. “It’s because of you my son’s alive.”

He thought about that a second, he reached for the bottle that was bought for him. Not many ever thanked him. “How so?”

“A surgery you invented.”

With Tsunade gone, medical ninjutsu wasn’t being pushed to its limits. He wasn’t a medic, but he wasn’t squeamish. Dissecting corpses and working backwards was another way to improve medicine.

He hummed, wondering what surgery, remembering the bodies and notes on his table.

“His mother didn’t survive, but because of you he did,” the man went on sadly.

Orochimaru didn’t need more information than that. Birthing babes was a messy business. Sometimes nature needed help. He had gotten the idea when a woman who had died during the act was on his slab. The fetus looked healthy there in her open belly, a shame the babe was facing the wrong way.

It had been a difficult thing in practice, with live patients. His first few attempts were failures. Both died anyway. Sometimes the child survived, mangled, oxygen starved, forever broken.

One died in a nurse’s hands, filling the room with heartbreaking wails as it bled to death from the knife cutting too deep. It never got to know the world before it killed him.

So hearing a child survived hardly meant anything. He poured another drink. With a bit of trepidation he asked, “and he is… healthy?”

“He’s perfect,” the white-haired jonin smiled. 

Orochimaru wasn’t happy with the feeling of relief. Sentimentality was useless. 

“Would you like to see him?” The man at the edge of the table asked.

Orochimaru turned and looked up at him. What a strange thing to ask a stranger, but he wasn’t really. He was a legendary sannin, a medical explorationist, the savior of his son’s life. And he was Konoha’s White Fang. Orochimaru hadn’t been paying attention before, but he knew Hatake Sakumo, by reputation only.

Maybe he had lost some of his tolerance in Tsunade’s absence. It could be the care for others he had forced down into indifference wasn’t as concurred as he thought. Staring at that kind smile and tired eyes reminded him of Jiraiya, and as much as he wanted to hate him, he felt himself resisting, nodding, getting up and following him from the bar. 

“He’s just a month old,” Sakumo whispered as they stood in the babe’s dark room. 

He had dismissed the nursemaid when they had arrived at the Hatake home. She had asked how his mission had gone, had told him Kakashi had just fallen asleep before leaving.

Orochimaru’s thin white fingers held the edge of the infant’s crib, staring down through the darkness. He saw no scars, no bent limbs, his belly looked full and his sleep peaceful. He was satisfied with the baby’s chances of surviving this cruel world a little longer.

“What was the complication?”

“The cord-,” Sakumo whispered back. 

Orochimaru put up his hand. The man didn’t have to say anymore. He hated how fickle a thing existence could be. The thing that gave it to you, as you were safe and protected, could choke the life from you in minutes.

He walked back out of the small room and into the light of the hall. Today was his birthday, he was supposed to be spending it with friends and people that cared. But he had no one that cared about him anymore. 

He hated them, his former friends.

Sakumo stepped out behind him, sliding the door closed quietly. “I knew it was a low success rate,” he shared. “But he’s alive… Thank you, Orochimaru-sama. I wish I could repay you somehow.”

“A drink,” he said quickly. He wasn’t drunk enough, the pain of abandonment still swirling along with his self-loathing.

“We did leave before you got to enjoy your evening,” Sakumo laughed gently, airily. He invited Orochimaru to follow him again. 

The snake summoner sat at the low table while his host poured their drinks. Sakumo sat down across from him. “What is it you were celebrating?”

Orochimaru let an annoyed smile show. “You think I was celebrating?”

“Isn’t that why shinobi drink?”

Orochimaru’s golden eyes stared through him. They both knew there were other reasons people drank. He sighed and closed his eyes, choosing to be calm. The man’s company had yet to disgust him. “Today is my birthday,” he answered honestly.

Sakumo smiled wide and rose his glass. “Happy birthday.”

Orochimaru let the smile tug at his lips, hiding it with a drink. _”Sourpuss,”_ Jiraiya’s voice mocked. He sighed. 

“So glum on such a good day,” Sakumo observed. “You look too young to be so sad.”

“The world doesn't care how old you are,” his soft gritty voice answered. He remembered the knife cut child and his cries. The way they faded to nothing. He hated it, a noise of failure.

Tsunade screaming for Dan to come back to her, covered in his blood. 

Jiraiya thinking he could save the world by saving three orphans.

The Sannin reeked of failure.

He looked up again at his host. Realizing he had been doing a poor job of hiding his pain. He saw him, a sad father, a deceased wife, cold and alone. His misery seemed to match his own.

Maybe that’s what they were doing. Wallowing in misery, loathing the world together. Orochimaru liked that, thinking his bitterness could find a partner.

He put his hands on the table, pushing himself up, leaning over it. Long dark hair slid over his shoulders. With smooth, unearthly grace, he knelt onto the table, sealing his lips to his.

His hand slid over the Hatake’s neck, cradling him, feeling the warmth of skin on his. Orochimaru tilted his head, and slid into the man’s lap. A hesitant tongue tasting his. 

He opened the jonin’s flak jacket and pushed it off his arms. He was desperate. He wanted something other than hurt.

Sakumo barely moved. His hand on the floor, the other timid as it held Orochimaru’s shoulder. 

The sannin started pulling the uniform shirt, untucking it, hands dropping down to open his pants.

Sakumo fell back, dark eyes staring at the white skin and purple wrapped around gold eyes. “I- I’ve only been with my wife.”

Orochimaru was quiet, reading the man’s broken heart on his face. The sannin closed his eyes and dropped his head, feeling the human weakness in his veins. Sympathy.

A baby started to cry. 

Sakumo untangled himself from him and stood without a word, going down the hall towards his son.

Orochimaru sighed and stood up as well, he didn’t bother to fix the open yukata, walking towards the open porch, looking out into the garden.

He hated them. 

The village scorned him, called him monster instead of scientist. His teammates abandoned him, drowning themselves in guilt. Hiruzen shoved him away like some kind of failed promise. The Legendary Sannin, meant to be Konoha’s saviors, shining pride of the village, three shinobi torn from their pedestals.

He hated them all.

Or, he wanted to.

There was a tiny piece of him still clinging to something, still caring. It was how he wound up here.

A few minutes passed. He wondered if he should leave. But the house was quiet and the ghosts were gone.

Footsteps creaked across the wood floors. He didn't move, didn’t look.

“I owe you so much,” the man’s voice was calm but rough. “He’s all I have left in the world.” Orochimaru closed his eyes, a hand slid over his waist, a body pressed to his back. “I'll repay you however I can.” Kissing the side of the pale throat, hands pulling open his robe further. 

He wanted to squirm. Shinobi and their life debts. But he was so numb. And Sakumo so warm. He let his head roll back, breath fall out of him, determined hands touching him.

With soft moans he rocked on his toes. He slid his hips back, looking for him under the layers between them.

One hand stroked him, clumsy and quick. Orochimaru turned his head reaching back for a handful of white hair, his tongue wanting to taste his again, the alcohol still on their breath.

Sakumo groaned against him, the sannin melting in his arms. His tired, lonely soul aching for connection and hating himself for it. “Is it… the same?” 

Orochimaru nuzzled into his neck, tongue dragging across his skin. “More or less.”

Sakumo stepped back, taking the sannin’s hand and pulling him towards the hall. 

They crossed into the dark room. Orochimaru looked at the large bed, fitting for a married couple. He didn’t care though. Turning back towards the jonin, he pulled his uniform shirt, bringing him closer, until they were kissing again.

The yukata slid from his arms and onto the floor behind him. In a few short breaths between eager movements the jonin’s shirt and mesh armor joined it.

A pale hand cradled his neck, holding dark hair back from their faces, mouths finding each other again. The sannin tilted his head, kissed a stubbled jaw, rolled his tongue against the shell of his ear, hands trying again at the jonin’s pants.

Sakumo’s eyes drifted to the bed. He felt his broken heart throb in his chest, remembering her.

Orochimaru became aware he was kissing a statue and moved back. He saw the man’s hurt, detesting the ghost he knew Sakumo saw on that bed. 

With an annoyed groan he spun them, putting himself to the wall and Sakumo’s back to his dead wife.

Orochimaru held his sad face in his hands, kissing him slower, trying to reawaken the fire that had been there seconds ago. It was slow and he was impatient. He slid down to his knees in front of him. Finally succeeding in getting the man’s pants off. 

He wrapped his lips around him, let the length slide down his throat, something he never had a hard time with. He once had a lover tell him he could keep a sword down there. He pulled back, tongue rolling against sensitive skin, coating him in saliva. His golden eyes looked up seeing a torn face, brow tense and eyes closed, flushed and breathless.

He stood, draping his arms over strong shoulders, pulling him against himself, leaning against their weight into the wall. “Hate me,” he breathed out in a hiss. “If it will help you. Hate me for doing this to you.”

Sakumo shook his head and sank into the man’s neck. He kissed indifferent skin, held the sannin’s hips, moved them drunkenly, not in the graceful way Orochimaru did. A long white leg bent over his hip. Black hair pressed into the wall, his head rolling against it, a pained groan escaping him when the man pushed in.

Sakumo adjusted the body in his arms. Holding him through the greedy thrusts of his own hips. Orochimaru grinned around breathless gasps, staring at the ceiling. He preferred pain.

Pain was understandable, predictable, stoppable. This hurt was easier, better than the one before it.

His stomach tensed and body swayed, bumping to the choppy rhythm. Skin smacking against skin, hard and fast, the cock inside him tearing him apart. He was laughing into his breaths.

He was in love. 

The euphoria and joy, filling him with sickening happiness. The warmth rolling through him like tidal waves. 

He moved his body against his, using chakra to hold himself to the wall. It was quick and messy, drunk and needy, but it was enough. 

Sakumo shuddered and sighed. Long slow thrusts, coming inside him. He let them fall forward, leaning all their weight against the wall. 

Orochimaru lowered himself, catching his breath. He ran his fingers through his hair, trying to straighten it while walking around him. He slid back into his gown, tying the obi around his waist. He was careful in his movements, waiting for something to be said. When the room was still quiet he spoke first, “I'm assuming I'm not welcome to spend the night.” 

Sakumo was staring, puzzled but his face fell and he looked at the bed.

Orochimaru’s expression was blank. He walked out of the bedroom without another word. He stopped in the hall besides the door to the nursery.

He hated them all.

After a few minutes Sakumo slid back into his boxers and walked out of the bedroom to his son’s room. 

Kakashi was still asleep. He watched his chest rise and fall, watched the signs of life in him.

He loved him. 

With all that was left of his broken heart. 

He tried to.

Orochimaru dived back into his work. Letting weeks pass without paying attention. Distracting himself again from his former teammates, from their pathetic lives, from the hopes he wished he’d never felt.

He walked with the Hokage through the hall of the tower. He was close to a breakthrough, a jutsu that would change the village for the better. But his former sensei was not proud, if anything he seemed worried.

He stopped mid-sentence, looking up to see the jonin leader walking towards them. He crossed his arms. “Hatake Sakumo,” Hiruzen greeted.

“Hokage-sama,” he bowed his head. Dark eyes looked over at the sannin, he smiled politely. “Orochimaru-sama.”

“Have you two met before?” Hiruzen asked curiously.

“Briefly,” Orochimaru answered before the jonin could sputter out an awkward answer. “I hope your home is no longer haunted, Hatake,” he said coldly and brushed past him to walk away.

Sakumo’s friendly smile fell. Hiruzen was visibly upset, insulted for him. “I will see to it that he apologizes. I am sorry for your loss.”

He shook his head, putting his smile back on. “It’s alright, Hokage-sama. I’m here for my mission report…?”

“Oh yes.” The old man nodded and they started towards his office.

One of Orochimaru’s labs was in the lower levels of the tower. It was something only a few people of high rank knew. Sakumo hadn’t even known before the incident with the sannin inspired him to do some digging, trying to find a time to be alone with him.

He walked carefully into the inner workroom, smelling the poisons and chemicals in the air.

Orochimaru had his back to the door, but he had to know someone was there. He had stopped moving. The room was silent, tense, and awkward.

“What?” Orochimaru turned, his white apron coated in gore, an open body in front of him.

Sakumo pulled his eyes back up. “I- I wanted to apologize… If I had insulted you…”

Orochimaru stuck the scalpel into the wooden table and pulled off his gloves. He walked across the room, untying the dirty apron.

Sakumo kept talking. “I thought we had- an understanding I guess. I hadn’t meant to lead you on and kick you out.”

When Orochimaru pulled off the paper mask he was smiling underneath, laughing darkly. “You meant little more to me than the thing between your legs, and every man has one of those.”

Sakumo stared back, watched the sannin dismiss him, and go to the wash bin. “That can’t be true,” he argued.

“I suppose,” Orochimaru sighed. “Some lose it. Injuries resulting in castration.”

“You didn’t use me,” he corrected, unamused. “Or that wasn't what you wanted.”

“You can not pretend to be an expert on me just because you’ve been inside me,” he grinned cruelly and picked up a rag, drying his hands and walking towards him.

“You’re in pain. You wanted someone to heal you.”

Orochimaru laughed harder than he had in a long while. “You adorable fool.”

“You want someone to love you,” he went on unphased.

The sannin’s eyes narrowed, glaring. 

“You wanted it to be me.”

“You’re wrong.” He crossed his arms, the rag still in his hand. 

“Then what did you want?” Sakumo asked.

“To hurt you,” he hissed bitterly.

Sakumo stopped walking closer, disbelief on his face. “Why?”

“Because I hate you,” Orochimaru sneered, throwing down the towel and moving closer.

Sakumo blinked, but then he remembered what Orochimaru had told him. _”Hate me if it’s easier…”_ So he didn't believe him. “Why?”

“Because you’re human,” he was standing in front of him, angry and disgusted.

“So are you,” he reminded calmly.

No he wasn’t. He was a scientist, a monster. He was cold and logical, unfeeling, and uncaring. Nothing could hurt someone who refused to feel. He wanted not to feel.

He wanted not to care.

He wanted to be a monster.

He grabbed the jonin’s flak jacket. He was going to push him away. He was going to tell him to leave.

But Sakumo leaned in pressing his mouth to his, holding his face in his hands. 

Orochimaru kept his hold on the man’s vest, never kissing back. He couldn't understand why he was doing this. The honorable shinobi life debt business had been done. The favors were nearly even.

Sakumo dropped his head onto the sannin’s shoulder. “I miss her. I miss her so much.” He sounded close to tears. “I'm lost without her.”

Orochimaru stared past the the mess of white hair under his chin. At scientific diagrams on the wall, his notes on anatomy he could look up and see while he worked. “You want me to replace her.”

“No. You can’t,” Sakumo corrected. “Nothing can.” He moved back, looking into the sannin’s golden eyes. “You will remind me of what I lost. You will keep me from forgetting her.”

“I make you miserable, so you want to keep me.” The sarcastic laugh that followed wasn’t as hurtful as he had intended it to be.

“I'm less miserable with you than I was on my own,” Sakumo shared with some hint of a smile. 

Orochimaru was quiet, thinking to himself. That was the very reason he had kissed the man in the first place. Why he had crawled across that table. The kinship of their misery. It was still what he wanted. 

Not someone to grow with, not someone to find happiness with. Someone who understood and shared his pain. 

When Sakumo kissed him again Orochimaru decided to test his resolve, pushing the jonin towards his desk. A drunken mistake was different than a sober dedication. He kissed him harder, sliding his tongue into a hesitant mouth.

A hand cradled his throat, moved up into dark hair, he let himself be pushed into the edge of the writing desk before pulling back. “Come home with me,” Sakumo asked gently in a sighing breath.

Orochimaru was surprised but he smiled. “Is it no longer haunted then?”

The Hatake’s dark eyes looked sadder. “There’s another room with another bed.”

Orochimaru did little to hide his laugh, stepping away from him. “I have a body to tend to. Go ahead without me. Put your son to bed.”

Sakumo waited, watching him a few seconds before leaving. People called the sannin a madman, a monster, to the point that even Orochimaru seemed to believe it. But he wasn't those things, couldn't be. He was doing his work for the benefit of the village. Everything he did wasn’t as cold and calculated as people thought.

He got drunk out of loneliness, sought human bonds, was let down when they fell through. He wasn’t a lunatic, he was a genius. Sakumo wasn’t afraid of him, he needed him.

Kakashi was still awake when he got home. The nursemaid had him on her hip, trying to calm fussy cries.

Sakumo frowned, knowing he’d be no better. 

“He’s just tired,” she said, passing him to his father anyway. “He’ll cry until he can’t anymore.” She gathered her things and left the family home.

He was alone, a screaming child in his arms. He wished he knew what to do, how to be a better father. He thought parenthood would be different. The nurses had told him, ‘the child will know you,’ when he talked about going on missions.

_”He has your blood,”_ his wife’s voice whispered reassuringly.

He sighed and looked up from his son’s red face. He was just as lost and just as confused about the world as the baby he held.

Some problems were easy to solve. A new diaper, a bottle in the middle of the night. But sometimes Kakashi would just scream for the sake of it.

“I thought you were putting him to bed,” Orochimaru stepped into the house without invitation. 

“The nurse said he’d put himself to sleep.”

Orochimaru sighed and brushed silver hair from the child’s forehead. Then without asking he slid his arms beneath Sakumo’s and took the baby from him. “I don’t deal with many live patients,” he spoke evenly. “So you’ll have to forgive my poor bedside manner.” He walked down the hall towards the nursery. “I much prefer the dead to the living. The dead have very little secrets and tell me all their mysteries, one way or another.” He didn’t turn on the light, stepping into the room. “For instance, did you know an infant’s eyes are the same cloudy blue as an elder’s? I would assume this means you have the same range in vision.” He folded tiny limbs into the child’s chest, holding them there with one hand. “For nine months you were tucked into a little ball suspended in fluid. I'm guessing you were more comfortable there. This big world is overwhelming, isn’t it?” He rolled him onto his belly, supporting his neck and rocking him. “And mother’s aren't known for sitting still. You were used to this. You were content and happy and they drug you into a bright, noisy place where you know nothing and no one, and even the voice you heard is gone.”

Sakumo was awestruck. In a few soft whines his son had gone quiet.

“Be bitter about it, hate them for it, but do it quietly,” Orochimaru finished, turning him back over and laying him in the crib.

“You think babies can be bitter and hateful?” 

“I know they can be,” he answered definitively. “Just like I know children can, and adults can. If they are human, they can hate.”

“You’re human,” Sakumo reminded again, walking away from where he had stood in the doorway.

“That is how I know,” Orochimaru said, reaching down to pull the baby’s thumb away from his mouth.

“You don’t seem hateful,” Sakumo watched his son’s big eyes blink heavily. He looked over at the sannin, thinking he saw a smile. “You seem hurt.”

Orochimaru paused, pulling his hand away from the tiny fingers, letting Kakashi curl his fist and kick his legs in a test of his own muscles.

He looked over at the man through the dark of the nursery. It was incredibly accurate and incredibly insulting. “They aren’t mutually exclusive.”

Sakumo’s hand slid across the rail of the crib as he stepped closer. Orochimaru was a small comfort in the lonely world, but one he needed. They must have shared the same thought, meeting somewhere in the middle.

Between brushes of lips was gentle sighs. He held his throat, felt the movement of his jaw and every swallow. Orochimaru clung to his vest, not in the way he held it earlier, in a way meant to keep the man from leaving.

They broke the entanglement in a soft breath, their hitai-ates clinking gently. 

Orochimaru slid closer, his body lining up against the older man’s, holding his stubbled jaw, kissing his neck. He remembered what had happened in his lab, the way he had broke the kiss, the way he ended nearly every kiss. The man did not want this. He did not want to need someone like Orochimaru.

There were regrets circling his thoughts.

His dead wife. His infant son. The selfish nature of this behaviour. 

But that didn’t mean he was about to stop.

Sex was one of the very few things that brought Orochimaru joy anymore. As fleeting as that happiness was, and how much he hated himself for it, he needed it. Both of their survival depended on distractions from the loss, the failures, the impending loneliness. This was a relationship built on convenience and survival, not attraction, not love.

Sakumo’s eyes drifted to his son, asleep in the crib. His existence was proof of the love he had shared. He was as much her child as he was his. Her ghost was alive in Kakashi. 

He gently pushed at the body moving against his, breaking the embrace. He stared into the golden eyes of the snake summoning sannin, wondering what it would be like to really want him.

“You said there was another room?” Orochimaru asked quietly.

Sakumo nodded and led them out of the nursery.

Orochimaru reached up, untying his headband as they walked down the hall. 

The spare bedroom was small and dim, but he wasn't there for the ambiance. He dropped his headband on the floor at the foot of the bed before opening his flak jacket and sliding it off his shoulders. Sakumo stood near the door, unmoving. 

Orochimaru grinned at his uncertainty. “Should you have a drink first?”

He shook his head stepping closer. “Just thinking how beautiful you are.” It was true, undeniably. Orochimaru was beautiful and powerful, like a sharpened sword or wild animal. It was a dark, fascinating beauty, not a simple one, not the kind of his late wife.

“How charming,” Orochimaru slid his hand around the man's throat, fingers pushing onto the long white hair. He pressed his body to his the way he had earlier. 

Sakumo leaned forward, hands finding the sannin’s waist, kissing him with need. They rocked on their toes, rolling against one another, breathing harder between the meeting of tongues. Orochimaru’s slender hands moved over the jonin’s shoulders, sinking down to open his uniform vest. 

The kiss broke. Sakumo’s head moved to the side, kissing porcelain skin. The vest falling from his arms with a heavy sound behind him, before holding Orochimaru tighter against him, pulling him into a warm rhythm, feeding the heat growing between them.

Carefully, Orochimaru slid the White Fang’s hitai-ate from his head and freed the tied hair. His hair was different than Jiraiya's. The Toad sage had thick, stiff hair. He knew from all the times his former teammate had drank himself to sleep and rested on his shoulder. Those once were fond memories.

Hatake had soft, messy hair. Pushing his fingers through it to the scalp underneath was like petting a dog, or a wolf.

He let it slip from his hands to pull his shirt off and then shake his own hair from his face.

Sakumo smiled softly, reaching up to pull a strand from where it had looped through the hole in his earing. 

Orochimaru dropped his shirt in the pile growing on the floor. He stepped back pulling off the armor underneath, watching Sakumo take measures to catch up. He grinned and opened his pants before laying himself onto the bed. He rose his hips and slid them down his thighs until a body climbed over his, pulling them over his knees and off completely. 

Orochimaru put his leg over Sakumo's waist, bringing him closer. The man moved too carefully, avoiding putting an elbow on long black hair across the sheets. He leaned down for another long kiss.

Orochimaru's hands slid down his chest. Again, Sakumo seemed reluctant to lose the last of his clothes. He breathed, moving back, staring down into golden eyes. His hand over the sannin’s at his waistband. “What does this mean?”

Orochimaru was confused for only a second. He smiled, brushing the man’s hand off, dropping his leg and sitting up to kiss his shoulder and neck. “For me, nothing.” Sakumo sighed, his eyes slipping closed, a hand stroking him. “It could for you too.”

The jonin dropped his head with a gentle moan. Orochimaru kissed the side of his face, slid his tongue across his ear. “Put it in if you want.”

“Doesn't it- I hurt you.”

Orochimaru laughed softly, dryly. “What shinobi can’t handle a little pain.”

“Can’t we- do this- without hurting you?”

Orochimaru growled, impatient with all this coddling. Sakumo had only known one kind of relationship, that much was clear. He was too gentle, too caring, too _loving_. It was sickening. 

He wound his leg around him and grabbed his shoulder, shoving him off and rolling them against the bed. Sakumo stared up at him surprised and confused. 

“What’s wrong?” He touched his cheek gently, his other hand between his legs. “Sex can happen many different ways. Did no one ever tell you?”

Sakumo's hands slid up the thighs spread around his. He held them tighter, gasping softly as Orochimaru sank down onto him. The man in his lap hissed and clenched a hand around the shoulder below him. He moved, shifting slowly, easing him entirely inside before releasing a held breath. 

He rose and fell back, rocking on his knees, gasping, panting, groaning softly. Sakumo could do little else but hold him, finding places on the sannin’s body to put his hands around. 

He stared, amazed at the way black hair swayed over white skin, paler than his own, barely a touch of color to it. His eyes and hands slid over him, not a single scar that he could see. But it wasn't because Orochimaru had never seen combat. He knew he had, the man was one of the three legendary sannin.

He was so beautiful, so young, and so powerful. 

And riding his cock like a paid harlotte he’d heard other men brag about.

Sakumo held the thin waist, giving in to the temptation to thrust up. Orochimaru moaned through a grin, eyes closed, rolling his hips to the new rhythm. Still smiling with gentle gasps, he started slumping forward, holding himself up against Sakumo’s chest. 

One of his hands slid down, slender fingers wrapping around himself, wrist turned out, stroking himself while bouncing on his thighs.

Sakumo could feel himself getting closer to release, breathing harder, pulling Orochimaru closer, over and over. His feet digging into the sheets, pushing up against the mattress.

Orochimaru was shaking, breathless, brows knitted, eyes tight. A tiny curse he had learned from Jiraiya slipping from his lips.

His golden eyes opened. The hand splayed across the jonin’s abdomen reached up, turning the man’s head, holding it against the bed. In a few short moves he was hissing quietly, as he came against his chest.

Making Sakumo question which one of them was the whore.

The sannin fell forward, panting breathlessly. He hummed happily and kissed the side of his face, pushing his hand into his hair and moving his stiff legs carefully. “I could teach you so much… I could make you the perfect lover. You seem so… teachable.”

Sakumo stared at the wall at the head of the bed. “I'm not naive.”

“No,” Orochimaru agreed, kissing his ear. “You were able to procreate. Take me then. However you want. Be my superior somehow.”

Sakumo held him and rolled them the way Orochimaru had a few minutes before. He held his legs, over his waist, thrusting into the warm body selfishly, making the sannin smile again.

He was too close to think about the insults, the words, and their meaning beyond trying to be hurtful. Wanting to fill him in more ways than one, before falling over the snake sannin. His head clear of the first time in weeks.

Feeling nothing but life in his veins. His heart beating hard in his chest, his body hot and tingling. And he even as he came down, laying over him, the fire fading into calm nothingness. It was better than feeling pain. 

Looking down at him, the sannin’s indifferent, maybe annoyed, expression, he realized sex was something else to him.

He carefully removed himself from him and stood from the bed.

Orochimaru watched him walk out of the room, feeling no loss. He laid out on the Hatake’s spare bed without bothering to dress himself, reaching for a sheet to cover himself. The night was temperate, the house cold, but his body warm. The lingering effects of physical excretion.

Sakumo dressed in his night robe and left his room after a short-lived attempt to relax. He walked back into the hall, trying to decide which direction to go.

His feet turned towards the nursery.

He watched his son sleep, feeling the overwhelming grief. He wanted to love him. He wanted Kakashi to be his whole world. The way he had when the baby was just a promise, just a word not yet realized. But he was here, flesh and blood, their blood, in one body, and he couldn't bring himself to love him the same. 

It hurt too much.

It was selfish to wish he had lost them both. His heart would be spared the guilt of not being strong enough. He wanted to love him. 

But his heart was too broken.

All he could do was pretend.

He watched Kakashi sleep, ignorant to the suffering he had innocently caused. He wasn’t even sure he had forgiven him for it, or that he could. It was Sakumo’s own fault for wanting a son in the first place.

All of this was his own will leading to his own destruction, which made the sting so much worse. There was no one to blame but himself for his own misery.

Sakumo walked back out of the nursery, knowing better than to curl up and sleep on the floor, hoping a baby would cure his heavy conscious.

The pale sheets were molded to Orochimaru, like an even softer second skin, a soft blue in the night light.

Without invitation he shed his robe and laid down besides him. The sannin smiled, his eyes still closed, not saying a word. 

Sakumo was on his side, staring at the shinobi that had surpassed him in all but age. It must be difficult for him, having no one left to check the worst parts of himself. Like a tiger let loose from a cage, or a snake alone among mice.

“I can feel you staring,” Orochimaru said hoarsely, sounding close to sleep. “Still thinking about how beautiful I am?”

“How powerful,” Sakumo corrected. “You have no more rivals in the village do you?”

Orochimaru grinned wider. “And yet to you I submit.”

“Do you though?” Sakumo asked purposefully, making the sannin lose his humor almost instantly. He might not be a genius but he wasn’t an idiot. Orochimaru never once gave up any true power, not to him, and he doubted to anyone. “It must be difficult, having no one left in the village to keep you grounded. Is that why you need me? You need to surrender to someone?”

Orochimaru sighed. “Don’t try to psychoanalyze me. Hiruzen is bad enough.”

“Your kind of power scares people.” He wondered if it scared himself.

“I have little care for what people think of me,” he said sourly, looking up at the ceiling.

“No,” Sakumo agreed, turning onto his back, “we all must be like mice to you.”

“Rats,” Orochimaru hissed bitterly into the dark.

They fell into a strange sort of arrangement. When Sakumo left on a mission Orochimaru’s life continued, uninterrupted. Hours, days he spent in one of his laboratories, forgetting to eat, forgoing sleep. When Sakumo returned Orochimaru only spent days with his research and nights at the Hatake residence.

He was still far from growing sentimental. It seemed the more the man climbed over him, ran from his heartache, the less Orochimaru cared. 

It had been months. Almost half a year, and he still wept in private for his dead wife. The sannin was not a patient or sympathetic man. He did not care to hear Sakumo’s sad stories about his tragedy. 

He did enjoy the man’s dependency on him. Without Orochimaru, he knew Sakumo would not have lasted much longer. The world was cruel to the weak and innocent, it had no care for a widower, or anyone. He could only hope to make himself stronger and survive longer. But the corpses on his tables began to resemble himself more and more. Some even having a face like his lover’s. Death would come for them as it did everyone. But there were still too many secrets to learn, too much to spend just one lifetime learning. 

“Would you want to live forever?” Orochimaru asked thoughtfully, gold eyes never looking over at his companion. “If there is a way.”

Sakumo blinked and turned his head. He thought about the question, about the tone it was asked in. “No. I don't see a place for me in future generations.”

Orochimaru looked over at him. He saw the same tired eyes and calm smile. The man was transparent. Sakumo was beyond saving. “You lack imagination.” He sighed and rolled out of the spare bed, reaching for his clothes.

“You’re leaving,” it wasn’t a question, just a sad observation.

“I have work to do. Goodbye, Sakumo.”

_”Heartless bastard,”_ Jiraiya hissed.

_”You love him,”_ Tsunade tried to persuade him to go back.

“Yes, I know,” he said quietly to himself as he left.

FIN


	2. Bonus Art

Here is a drawing I did related to this fanfic, for those of you who do not follow my tumblr.

Thank you so much for reading! I hope I didn't break your hearts too badly.


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